JFK Medical Center Staff Received COVID Vaccine Thursday

EDISON, NJ — At 3 p.m. Thursday afternoon, the very first employees at JFK Medical Center in Edison received the COVID-19 vaccine. They received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

JFK Medical Center is part of the Hackensack Meridian chain.

These JFK staffers were not just doctors and nurses but also included an EMT, an administrator in the Emergency Department, an ICU nurse, and an ancillary support team member.

The Pfizer vaccine is the first to be given out in the U.S., but the Food & Drug Administration just approved the Moderna vaccine this week.

New Jersey is following a “hub and spoke” model to distribute the vaccine. At Hackensack Meridian Health, the hubs have been identified as Jersey Shore University Medical Center, Ocean Medical Center, Hackensack University Medical Center and JFK Medical Center.

From there, the vaccine will be distributed to its remaining acute care hospitals. All hospitals in New Jersey will have the vaccine.

At this time, about 80 percent of Hackensack Meridian's front-line team members say they will get the vaccine, said a hospital spokeswoman.

"Others are taking a wait-and-see attitude and only a small percentage said they will not get vaccinated," she said.

And Johnson & Johnson announced late Thursday night that phase three of its vaccine trial is now fully enrolled, with 45,000 participants. Johnson & Johnson said they expect they will know their vaccine's efficacy by the end of January 2021.